Thursday, May 18, 2006

Now it's tough to call the Ducks' postseason history a smashing success, considering:

The Ducks have never qualified for the playoffs in consecutive seasons.

Each postseason has been under a different coaching staff

2 of our first 3 postseason series involved being swept by Detroit

However, given these factors, it's amazing how well the Ducks have done in the playoffs the odd years when they decide to qualify.Overall, the Ducks have a postseason series record of 6-3 (including 5-1 since 2003). Here are some random notes about this short-but-sweet playoff success. I guess what should qualify this is that in all these cases, we were never expected to make any playoff noise. Nobody saw this success coming.

The Ducks all-time are 3-2 in series sweeps, 1-0 when a series goes six games, and 2-1 when a series goes to Game Seven.

2 of our 3 series losses came against the eventual Stanley Cup champs (Detroit 1997, New Jersey 2003).

The Ducks have never won a Game Five (0-4), yet have a 3-1 record when a series gets to Game Five. We are 4-0 in Game Sixes and 2-1 in Game Sevens.

The Ducks have beaten a defending Stanley Cup champion (Detroit 2003), a defending Western Conference champion (Calgary 2006), and a President's Trophy winner (Dallas 2003). We are the only team to have swept a defending SC champ.

The Ducks have had 2 stretches of 3 straight postseason shutouts (Giguere 2003 and Bryzgalov 2006).

Records that will never be broken? How about allowing one frickin' goal in a 4-game series (Minnesota 2003). Or perhaps it is Giguere's 170-minute 95-save unbeaten-in-overtime streak(which, incidentally, is not over).

The Ducks have yet to lose a series in which it wins at leastone of the first two games. Round 1 vs. Calgary, incidentally, is the only time the Ducks have split the first two games in a series.